The Anstruther children were the terror of Whitcliffe. Their mother said that they had excellent hearts, and this was very possibly true, but it was also painfully evident that they had no manners, and a very small amount of conscience. Add to this the possession of tremendous animal spirits, splendid lungs, and most inventive brains, and it will be seen that the life of a conscientious elder sister, who held pronounced views of her own on the subject of education, was not likely to be an easy one among them. Of all those who tried to govern them Cecil was perhaps the least successful, for she was gentle, methodical, and somewhat old-maidish in her ways, and each of these tendencies militated strongly against her. She got on very well with Mrs Anstruther (indeed, no one who knew that stout, untidy little lady, with her blue-grey eyes and her soft, drawling brogue, could do otherwise), and loved her almost as much as if she had been her own mother, but the children did not take to her. Even now, after a morning spent in wild efforts to clear away the things they left about, undo the mischief they had done, and efface generally the traces of their baleful existence, she could not eat her dinner in peace. Patsy was spilling his pudding on the carpet, Loey feeding the cat from his plate, and when Cecil leaned across the table to rescue Eily’s glass of water from imminent peril of destruction, Terry seized the opportunity of pulling out all her hair-pins. And all this time Fitz was roaring out the paragraph from the ‘Argus’ in his loudest tones. “Fitzgerald!” came in a stern voice from the lower end of the table, where sat Mr Anstruther, with a book propped up against the dish in front of him; “don’t make that noise. Why don’t you keep the children quiet, Cecil? My dear!” and Mr Anstruther’s eye-glasses went slowly up, to be focussed on Cecil’s dishevelled tresses, “what have you been doing to your hair? It is in a most disgraceful state. What is all this row about?” “Why, daddy,” cried Loey, otherwise Owen, “it’s what we’ll do with Cissie’s money we’re talking about.” “You will do nothing with it,” returned Mr Anstruther, severely, for the point was rather a sore one with him. “Your sister will spend the money as she likes, without consulting a set of little dunces like you.” “Oh, papa, but I mean to do something for them,” cried Cecil. “I have been so glad ever since I heard I had got the prize to think that I should be able to help you with it. The money will pay the boys’ fees for one term, or help with their books, at any rate.” “You are very good, my dear child, in wishing to be of use, but what can fifteen pounds do towards educating four boys, who have not brains enough among them all to get a ten-pound scholarship, nor steadiness and sense of honour enough to go to and from the Grammar-School like gentlemen? What with their school-fees, and the bills I have to pay for the damage they do, it needs a millionaire to look after them.”